UPDATE: President Trump signed this bill into law on Oct. 23, 2018. Read our story from September, when the House of Representatives first passed the bill.

The companies trying to build a massive hydroelectric power plant on the doorstep of Joshua Tree National Park got one step closer to their objective last week.

The House of Representatives unanimously approved America's Water Infrastructure Act, a sprawling bill that would authorize and fund projects across the country, from bridge repairs to school drinking fountain replacements. The bill includes a provision that would allow federal regulators to throw a lifeline to the Eagle Mountain hydropower plant, which would be built in the open desert near Interstate 10, about an hour east of Palm Springs, on a property as close as 1.5 miles to Joshua Tree National Park.

Many environmentalists oppose the Eagle Mountain project, arguing it would drain a desert groundwater aquifer and harm wildlife in and around the national park. The developers have struggled to find a buyer for the electricity the facility would generate and failed to start construction by a key deadline earlier this year. Critics recently asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to terminate the project's license.

But the bill that passed the House on Sept. 13 would allow FERC to extend the construction start deadline for hydropower facilities by as much as eight years, giving the Eagle Mountain developers plenty of time to get started on their $2.5-billion project.

The legislation has bipartisan support and is likely to pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Trump. Its passage would be a victory for the longtime developer of the Eagle Mountain project, Eagle Crest Energy Company, and Eagle Crest's development partner, Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources. Eagle Crest and NextEra have argued their project would help California meet its renewable energy and climate change goals by acting as a giant battery, absorbing excess electricity from the state's solar and wind farms when supply exceeds demand, then generating electricity when it's needed.

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The Campo Verde solar project in California's Imperial Valley is seen from a drone, with Mount Signal in the background.(Photo: Jay Calderon and Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)

Deborah Sivas, an attorney who runs Stanford University's Environmental Law Clinic, has represented the nonprofit organization National Parks Conservation Association, in its fight to block new development in the Eagle Mountain area. She said the problem with extending the construction start deadline for this particular project is that much of the information in its environmental review is already out of date, and is getting more stale by the year. Some of the information came from an early-1990s environmental analysis for a proposed landfill at the Eagle Mountain site, Sivas said. That's because when the new analysis for the hydropower plant was conducted, the property was owned by a company that opposed the project and wouldn't let the developers access the site.

The latest environmental review "doesn’t have the updated wildlife information in it, and it certainly doesn't have the updated water information in it," Sivas said.

Eagle Crest wants to fill two of those pits with groundwater pumped from beneath the desert floor. The company says it would pump water uphill from one pit to another when excess electricity from solar and wind farm floods the power grid, then release water back downhill to turn turbines and generate electricity when people need power. Eagle Crest has estimated it would pump more than 32 billion gallons of water over 50 years.

Conservation groups say the Eagle Mountain area is prime habitat for at-risk species such as bighorn sheep, golden eagles and desert tortoises, which could be harmed by an industrial-scale energy project with a capacity of 1,300 megawatts. Critics also worry that tapping the Chuckwalla Valley aquifer to fill the hydropower plant's open pits would diminish neighboring groundwater basins beneath Joshua Tree National Park, harming ecosystems in the park by sapping springs that are oases for wildlife.

Eagle Crest's supporters reject that characterization. They say ecosystems in the Eagle Mountain area have already been disrupted by a long history of iron mining.

"All you have to do is visit the actual site and you'll see it's an environmentally disturbed area to begin with," state Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, a Coachella Democrat, told The Desert Sun earlier this month. "It's not close to Joshua Tree. It's not far from it, but it certainly isn't what people perceive it to be, adjacent to Joshua Tree."

Garcia has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from NextEra, as have several other lawmakers who have voiced support for the Eagle Mountain project.

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A tunnel frames a rail car from a bygone era at the former Eagle Mountain iron mine on Nov. 14, 2014.(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the hydropower plant in 2014, with a construction start deadline of 2016. The commission then granted Eagle Crest a two-year extension, as allowed under federal law. But Eagle Crest still wasn't able to find a buyer for the electricity its facility would generate, despite adding a development partner in NextEra, one of the country's largest developers of solar and wind farms.

The new deadline came and went this June, leading critics to urge FERC to terminate the project's license. But FERC never took that step. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Paul Cook, an Apple Valley Republican, introduced a bill that would let the commission give the Eagle Mountain developers more time. Cook has received thousands of dollars in contributions this election cycle from Eagle Crest and its president, Steve Lowe.

Cook's bill never passed. But a provision was added to the larger water infrastructure bill, which the House passed last week, that would have the same effect. The legislation would amend federal law to let FERC extend construction start deadlines for hydropower project for as long as eight years. If the agency took that step for Eagle Mountain, the developers would have until 2024 to find a buyer and start construction.

While the federal water infrastructure bill appears likely to pass Congress, lawmakers in California rebuffed a recent effort by NextEra to bail out the Eagle Mountain project.

Assembly Bill 2787, which was sponsored by NextEra, would have required California utilities to sign contracts for "pumped storage" hydropower projects, almost certainly including Eagle Mountain. The bill was co-authored by 10 Democrats and two Republicans, all of whom had received at least $2,000 in campaign money from NextEra during the 2018 election cycle. The co-authors included all three lawmakers who represent the Coachella Valley: Democrat Eduardo Garcia and Republicans Chad Mayes and Jeff Stone.

Eagle Crest told federal officials in a recent document that it doesn't anticipate starting construction until 2021. Eagle Crest president Steve Lowe also said in the document that the company and its investors have poured $30 million into the project since 2007.

Eagle Crest submitted the document to the Interior Department last week, in response to an effort by environmentalists to block the company's project. Several environmental groups are appealing the Trump administration's decision last month to approve a power line and water pipeline that Eagle Crest wants to build across federal lands. The developer sent a document to federal officials opposing the appeal, a copy of which was provided to The Desert Sun by Sivas, the lawyer for some of the environmentalists.

Sammy Roth writes about energy and the environment for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.